The AI Edge in Retail: Taking Back Control of Product Discovery with HCL Commerce+

Editor’s note: This blog is part of a three-part series exploring how AI is reshaping search, discovery and the digital commerce experience for retailers.

• Read Part 1: The Discovery Shake-Up: Why Retailers Must Rethink Visibility in the GenAI Era
• Read Part 2: Search Is Changing—But Not All Search Is Lost: How Retailers Can Win With Embedded AI
• Read Part 3: The AI Edge in Retail: Taking Back Control of Product Discovery with HCL Commerce+

In our first two blog posts, we explored how generative AI is redefining search—and what that means for retailers. First, we looked at how external discovery is shifting away from SEO and toward AI-driven answers. Then we turned inward, focusing on how embedded, onsite AI search gives retailers a powerful tool to create intent-driven experiences.

 In this third and final post in the series, we dive into something even more actionable: how HCL Commerce+ brings those AI capabilities directly into your commerce engine, giving you more control, greater agility, and smarter outcomes.

When AI Disrupts Search, Embedded Intelligence Becomes Essential

There’s no question that generative AI is changing the rules. Consumers are no longer typing keywords—they’re asking full questions, often in natural language. And increasingly, it’s not a traditional search engine delivering the results. It’s a large language model (LLM) interpreting the query, assembling an answer, and sometimes skipping the “link out” to your site entirely.

That shift has vast implications for visibility, traffic, and customer acquisition costs. But it also creates a moment of opportunity: retailers can no longer rely on third-party platforms for product discovery—they need to own it.

And owning discovery means investing in more innovative, AI-powered experiences that start inside your digital storefront.

AI That’s Built in, Not Bolted On

HCL Commerce+ was built with this shift in mind.

Unlike many platforms where AI is treated as a third-party plugin or a nice-to-have feature, HCL Commerce+ embeds AI into the heart of the solution. It’s not an add-on—it’s part of the architecture. That means you’re not just reacting to change. You’re working with a platform already engineered for the future of discovery.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

What AI Can Do For You Inside HCL Commerce+

1. Deliver Product Recommendations

AI-driven recommendations are tuned in real time to customer behavior, preferences, and past interactions. Whether you want to drive upsell, cross-sell, or increase AOV, you don’t need a team of data scientists to make it happen—it’s built in and ready to go.

2. Power Intent-based Search Experiences

Your customers aren’t typing “red jacket size M” anymore. They’re asking for “something stylish for a weekend trip.” AI search in HCL Commerce+ understands that nuance and returns results that feel relevant—because they are.

3. Personalize Pricing and Promotions Dynamically

With built-in intelligence, you can tailor pricing, offers, and promotions to different customer segments based on behavior, location, purchase histor,y and more. What once took hours of rules-based logic now takes minutes.

4. Let AI Do The Heavy Lifting

From merchandising and inventory insights to customer segmentation, AI continuously learns and improves. This self-optimizing loop helps you make smarter decisions without the trial and error or the burnout.

5. Use Predictive Insights to Drive Strategy

You’re not just reacting to what happened last quarter. You’re seeing what’s coming. HCL Commerce+ provides predictive analytics that inform everything from inventory planning to campaign targeting.

It’s Not Just About Smarts—it’s About Control

In a world where AI-driven discovery is often a black box, HCL Commerce+ gives you back control of the experience:

• You decide how and where AI is applied.
• You shape the logic behind recommendations and pricing.
• You deliver value to customers in a way that’s aligned with your brand and business goals.

This is how embedded AI becomes a strategic differentiator. 

The future of commerce is composable, embedded, and intelligent

What makes HCL Commerce+ even more powerful is its integrated composable architecture. That means you can deploy only the needed capabilities, integrate them seamlessly with existing systems, and scale up (or pivot) when the market changes.

AI in HCL Commerce+ isn’t locked into a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s modular, flexible and designed to evolve with you.

Turn AI Disruption Into a Discovery Advantage

Yes, the search landscape is changing. And yes, traditional SEO and ad strategies may no longer deliver the results they once did.

But that’s not the whole story.

Retailers still have an enormous opportunity to lead by focusing on the digital experiences they own. With embedded AI in HCL Commerce+, you can build smarter on-site search, deliver more relevant recommendations, personalize offers, and gain a deeper understanding of what drives your customers.

And in an era where trust, relevance, and speed matter more than ever, that’s the edge that sets leading retailers apart.

Want to see HCL Commerce+ AI capabilities in action—or learn how they can integrate into your existing stack? Check out our website, where you can download all our latest whitepapers and playbooks, or contact us for a personalized demo.